MICHEL VAN DER BURG

Category Archives: memo

First time use of Westerbork film in 1948 in Dutch cinema news (Polygoon Hollands Nieuws) of the trial in The Hague of Hanns A. Rauter, an Austrian who was the highest SS official in Nazi-occupied Holland and who was tasked with setting up the camps in Westerbork and other dutch cities, and the arrests , internment and deportation of Dutch Jews and other groups of Dutch people , Roma, Sinti, resistance workers.
The chairman of the court is mr. P.G.M. van Meeuwen; attorney-at-law is mr. J. Zaayer, defender (added) is mr. K. van Rijckevorsel.
Rauter – before leaving the courtroom – speaks: ‘Ich habe mich niemals schuldig gefühlt’ (I never felt guilty).
The next year Rauter was executed by firing squad nearby the The Hague – Scheveningen prison. Polygoon weekly cinema news April 1948, Netherlands.
Source film : Polygoon Hollands Nieuws / Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid (Open Images) Film 20190520 Michel van der Burg | Settela.com
20190520 ~ Westerbork Film in ‘Proces Rauter’ 1948

Settela peeks outside the death train to Auschwitz.
Last glance at the outside world for the 9-year-old Dutch Sinti girl Settela Steinbach just before these cattle car doors close , and this death train heads for Auschwitz on May 19 , 1944.
Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach peeks outside , at the last moment just before the sliding door is closed , standing inside a freight wagon with 74 people on May 19 , 1944 in the Westerbork concentration camp in Holland (75 people the moment the train leaves), when this deportation train leaves for Auschwitz-Birkenau – where Settela is murdered a few months later in one of the gas chambers.
Here she wears a headscarf made from a torn sheet, because the Nazis had her head shaved , and while Settela peeks outside , her mother cries behind her in the car : “Get out of there, or soon your head gets in between!”
She was filmed by the Jewish prisoner filmmaker Rudolf Breslauer as part of a documentary film being made on the Westerbork camp.
In 2017 I made two other short films of this moment (20170721 and 20170725 michelvanderburg.com).
Today 75 years later, on the occasion of the opening of the site Settela.com this new 1 minute slow-motion film (4:3 format) using the original Westerbork 1944 film rushes of Rudolf Breslauer from the archive of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Open Images). 20190519 ~ Settela ~ Settela.com

Europe 1 — Winston Churchill that sunny Sunday afternoon of 9 May 1948 on the Dam square in the heart of Amsterdam at the European rally “Europe 1” addressing the crowd with a “V” sign , saying :

“We hope to reach again a Europe … in which men will be proud to say, ‘I am a European’ …. a Europe where men of every country will think as much of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and that without losing any of their love and loyalty of their birthplace.
We hope wherever they go in this wide domain, to which we set no limits in the European Continent, they will truly feel “Here I am at home. I am a citizen of this country too”.

It rained April 19th, 1943 – and it rained cats and dogs for a moment during the 2019 commemoration of Transport XX last sunday in Boortmeerbeek , Belgium. ① memo 20190507 ~ Speech in Showers ~ Transport XX

The present has its past. Presentation of new unique book of a study of Transport XX by author Marc Michiels yesterday during the commemoration of Transport XX – May 5, 2019 in Boortmeerbeek, Belgium.
“Het XXste transport naar Auschwitz” (the XXth transport to Auschwitz) is the 2nd (revised and expanded) edition of this detailed dutch work (ISBN
9789059089808 ) published last month by the two authors Marc Michiels and Mark Van den Wijngaert.

On the night of April 19, 1943 the XXth Transport departs from the Dossinkazerne in Mechelen with 1631 Jewish men, women and children heading for Auschwitz. Armed with one revolver, and a storm lamp covered with red tissue paper, three young men manage to stop the train between Boortmeerbeek and Haacht and free seventeen prisoners.

This rescue operation by George Livschitz, Robert Maistriau and Jean Franklemon is unique in the history of the Holocaust. Even before the train reaches the Belgian border, more than two hundred prisoners can escape. Some of them are shot, others are arrested again by the Nazis, but most escape the fate that awaits them in Auschwitz.

The book describes the escapes from the XXth Transport, how the transport was put together and what would happen to the vast majority of deportees. The countless testimonies confront the reader with the racial destructiveness of the Nazis and tell how some people barely managed to escape.

Marc is dreaming now of an English and or French translation of his dutch book…

Klezmer band INEJNEM (English: Together) in front of Restaurant Ester in the heart of Kazimierz , Kraków , Poland , on May 26th , 2012.
INEJNEM – with Iryna Stefanyuk singing , Myroslav Bandrivskyy on clarinet, Jurij Bejchuk on guitar, and Jarosław Filipiak on contrabass. More about Inejnem on facebook – http://www.facebook.com/Inejnem – web site inejnem.pl .
Sorry .. I recorded not all of their song .. I stopped filming thinking ‘can’t use this online for copyright reasons’ but now I believe I was wrong… so here that strong emotional song .. the first part .. all I have recorded – that Saturday in the heart of Kazimierz – the old Jewish district of Kraków (Poland) , after visiting there the Center for Jewish Culture (Judaica Foundation) the day before together with Simon Gronowski , and the Auschwitz camps May 24 with Simon and Koenraad Tinel (and Flemish TV with director Marianne Soetewey, working there too on a documentary). I posted 3 other songs of INEJNEM here https://michelvanderburg.com/?s=INEJNEM
① memo 20190502 ~ Donna Donna — INEJNEM ~ Film : Michel van der Burg – michelvanderburg.com | 1-memo.com